Qualla: Dunoon

Dunoon: Introduction

Thu, 28 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

For thirty-one years, the sound of an American helicopter overhead was as ordinary in Dunoon as the rain. From 1961 until 1992, this Victorian seaside town on the Cowal coast hosted around three thousand Americans, the families of the United States Navy submarine crews who refitted Polaris ballistic missile submarines across the water at the Holy Loch. Then, almost overnight, they left. The Cold War had ended, the base was deemed unnecessary, and a town built on first paddle steamers and then nuclear submarines had to figure out a third act. Standing today on the breakwater that replaced part of the old Victorian pier, watching a passenger ferry come in from Gourock, you can see all three Dunoons at once.

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Dunoon: Castle on a Conical Hill

Thu, 28 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

There was a Dunoon long before there was a town. The castle that gave the place its name was raised in the twelfth century on a small, partly artificial conical hill above the Firth of Clyde. Only low walls remain now. It eventually became a royal castle with the Earls of Argyll,...

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Dunoon: The Steam Years

Thu, 28 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Modern Dunoon was built by engineering. As late as 1822 there were only three or four slated houses; the rest were traditional Highland cottages. James Ewing, an MP from Glasgow, built Castle House next to the old castle and the village began to expand. The construction of a 130-...

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Dunoon: Garrison Town

Thu, 28 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

In 1961, as the Cold War deepened, the US Navy submarine tender USS Proteus brought Polaris ballistic missiles and nuclear submarines into the sheltered waters of the Holy Loch at Sandbank, just north of Dunoon. For thirty years, Holy Loch was the home port of US Submarine Squadr...

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Dunoon: Highland Mary and the Annual Gathering

Thu, 28 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The town has held onto its older identities. Mary Campbell, known as Highland Mary, was born at Auchamore Farm in Dunoon; she had a relationship with the poet Robert Burns, and the statue raised in her memory in 1896 still stands on Castle Hill, looking out over the Firth. The Co...

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Dunoon: Hills Behind the Town

Thu, 28 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Walk five minutes uphill from the seafront and the town disappears. Trails thread Corlarach Hill and the Bishop's Glen Reservoir, where one of three old water-supply reservoirs is now a freshwater fly-fishing loch. Seven miles north, on the road past the Holy Loch, Puck's Glen dr...

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